PLAYTOP INCREASES ITS COVERAGE AROUND THE WORLD

Newark and Edinburgh-based Playtop Limited is continuing to expand its worldwide network by appointing a new Indian licensee, Mumbai-based Ecoflex. 

Ecoflex, part of the 45 year old Sah & Sanghi Group, which has 1200 employees, was appointed after Barry Baker, international business development manager at Playtop, met with Karun Sanghi, managing director of Ecoflex, whilst visiting the country as part of a UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) event. With the addition of India to its licensee network, Playtop now has a presence in 24 countries around the world.

The base layer of Playtop^® is made from recycled commercial vehicle tyres. A sister company, Charles Lawrence International, recycles over 350,000 truck tyres a year to create the rubber granules that form the impact-absorbing layer. The first ever Playtop^® surface was laid in 1977 and is still in use today.

Playtop has since grown to become Europe’s leading supplier and installer of impact-absorbing surfacing. Meeting national and international safety guidelines, over a million square metres of Playtop^® have now been laid.

Playtop is renowned for the quality of its impact-absorbing play surfacing, its design and colour capabilities and its project management

skills. It is Ecoflex’s experience and expertise in the latter that has given Playtop the confidence to award it the licensee agreement for India.

Barry Baker commented: “The events organised by UKTI are extremely useful to businesses like Playtop, who are constantly looking for new countries to expand into. UKTI offers a wide variety of information as well as bringing people together to create mutually beneficial business partnerships. We are delighted that Ecoflex is onboard and we are looking forward to undertaking many projects in India.”

Barry has spent the last five years developing Playtop’s licensee network and his hard work recently paid off when Playtop received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade for its rapid growth in export markets.

Having such a widespread network means that many of the countries in which Playtop operates are non-English speaking and, as a result, strategies to overcome language and cultural barriers are crucial. One such strategy adopted by Playtop is the development of its website, www.playtop.com, which is now available in eleven languages with a further five planned in the near future. It was because of strategic developments like this that Playtop was also recently awarded top honours at the East Midlands International Business Communications Awards.

Playtop realises that any future expansion plans can only be possible through the support of licence agreements like the one with Ecoflex.

As a result it is of paramount importance that Playtop and Ecoflex work closely together to provide an excellent service to India.

Nigel Allen, managing director of Playtop said: “This new agreement demonstrates our ongoing commitment to our licensees and it is through these partnerships that Playtop can continue its international growth. For our licence agreements to work it is essential that our partners have similar principles and strategies in order to develop the market for Playtop^® and I feel confident that the agreement between Ecoflex and Playtop will facilitate this.

“It has been a great year so far for Playtop and the agreement with Ecoflex has made it even better.  We hope that through our work with them, Playtop will become the impact-absorbing surface of choice in India and that many children will benefit from having exciting and creative, as well as safe, places to play.”

Photo (L to R):  Charles Lawrence, Chairman; Nigel Allen, Managing Director of Playtop; Karun Sanghi, Managing Director of Ecoflex and Barry Baker, International Business Development Manager for Playtop.